The present invention is directed to a post print finishing device in which imaging material is used to bind a printed documented.
Current devices and methods for printing and binding media sheets involve printing the desired document on a plurality of media sheets, assembling the media sheets into a stack, and separately stapling, clamping, gluing and/or sewing the stack. In addition to imaging material used to print the document, each of these binding methods require separate binding materials, increasing the cost and complexity of binding. Techniques for binding media sheets using imaging material are known in the art. These techniques generally involve applying imaging material such as toner to defined binding regions on multiple sheets, assembling the media sheets into a stack, and reactivating the imaging material, causing the media sheets to adhere to one another.
The present invention was developed to integrate an imaging material binder into a post print finishing device such as the stapler/stacker devices commonly used with middle to high end printers and copiers. The modular implementation shown in the drawings and detailed below was developed for use in the Hewlett-Packard Company model C8085A stapler/stacker with the imaging material binder module replacing the stapler module. Various techniques and structural configurations for binding documents using imaging material are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/320,060, filed May 26, 1999 titled Binding Sheet Media Using Imaging Material, Ser. No. 09/482,124, filed Jan. 11, 2000 titled Apparatus and Method For Binding Sheet Media, and Ser. No. 09/866,017, filed May 24, 2001 titled Apparatus and Method for Binding Sheet Media, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
When imaging material binding is used, each sheet of paper or other print media includes imaging material, such as toner, applied to one or more selected binding regions in addition to the print image applied to each sheet. The binding regions are usually located along one edge of the media sheet on one or both sides. All of the imaging material applied to the sheet is activated as part of the print process. The imaging material applied to the binding region(s) is reactivated in the binder to bind the multiple sheets of a document together. The bound document may be formed by reactivating the imaging material in a stack of sheets in the document at the same time or by individually binding each sheet one after another to the stack. The strength of the inter-sheet bond is a function of the type, area, density, and degree of reactivation of the imaging material applied to the binding region of each sheet. By varying these parameters the inter-sheet bond can be made very strong to firmly bind the document or less strong to allow easy separation. When the imaging material is toner, such as that used in laser printers, the imaging material will usually be reactivated by applying heat and pressure as in the exemplary embodiment of the invention detailed below. Other imaging materials and reactivation techniques may also be used, such as those described in the ""060 application.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a post print finishing device that incorporates an imaging material binder into the post print handling and finishing functions. In one exemplary embodiment of the invention, the finishing device includes a flipper module, an accumulator module and a binder module. The binder module binds sheets together by reactivating imaging material applied to binding regions on the sheets by a printing device. The flipper module receives a sheet leading edge first and discharges the sheet trailing edge first. That is to say, the flipper module flips the sheet before discharging the sheet for further processing. The accumulator module stacks the sheets, presents the sheets to the binder for binding and then discharges the bound stack to the output bin.